Monday, June 23, 2008

Paulie comes to New York. Hilarity ensues.

My brother Paul came to visit this weekend. He had never been to New York, and every time we told someone that, they got a doe-eyed blissful look on their face like we had just told them he was about to lose his virginity to a solid gold princess. We ran into one of my neighbors on the elevator and he was simply thrilled to hear that Paul would be experiencing New York through fresh eyes. Like several other people we spoke to, he clapped his hands and proclaimed avuncularly "I am so excited for you. This is wonderful."

And it was. We saw The National, Modest Mouse, and REM at Madison Square Garden and John Scofield at The Blue Note; jogged along the Hudson River; walked through Central Park; went to the Neue Gallery of German and Austrian Art; ate and drank copiously; and viewed the city from my rooftop. Then I begged him to move here and hang out with me all the time. And this was beautifully balanced by a number of phone calls from our mother, who asked if I would please make sure Paul got on the plane on Sunday to return to Oak Park. In my dad's words "We need him here, too." I think their anxiety stems from the fact that they now have children in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Paul sometimes threatens to move to Colorado and my mom breaks into hives.

Everyone loves Paul. He is the youngest in our family and when he was a baby, the rest of us siblings fought over who got to sit near him in the car. He was so small and cute and he referred to himself as "My Paul" since that's what our mom called him. Oddly, many of our other relatives still call him "Paulie Boobs," for reasons that remain unclear. I think the only time I have been even remotely angry at Paul was when I was 10 and he was 4 and he bit me really hard. I screamed so loudly that he burst into tears and ran away.

There was no biting this weekend.* Paul did get on the plane, and is back in OP at this point, while everything here is as it should be on a Sunday night:

I am slowly recovering from the weekend and pretending tomorrow isn't Monday. Rob is packing to go to Korea for the week, because if the two of us are actually in the same place for more than 7 days at a time, there will be a catastrophic disaster in the space-time continuum. Smokey is resting quietly so that he has enough energy to wake us up in the middle of the night. And Emma is protecting a pizza box with her oversized cat butt, proving the point that if we put anything at all on the ground, Emma will sit on it. I might make "Things Emma Sat On" a regular feature of the blog.